Adieu Google Reader: Itâ€™s Time to Find an Effective Replacement

Itâ€™s time to say goodbye to Google Reader and search for a better alternative as Google ends this service from July 1, 2013. Hopefully, you may have downloaded your data from reader and are in search of an effective replacement since Google has announced a three month sunset period. CNN reports that there are plenty of replacement options available for Google Reader. Let us analyze them in detail.

According to the report, a wide variety of replacement tools are in the spotlight with the capability to deliver straight RSS feeds. The best one among them is Feedly, which can drag content from different websites into customizable feed just like Google Reader. It also provides a feature called â€˜Feedly Cloudâ€™ for migration. The other effective tools are AolReader, NewsBlur, NetVibes and The Old Reader. Tools such as Digg Reader provide an option to import Google Reader on the login page itself as shown as below.

If you are hesitant about using replacement tools, you can try out social media networks for news feeds. However, Twitter is a more powerful source compared to other social media options. By making use of hashtags in Twitter, it is possible to follow news organizations or writers and collect news about any specific topic or event, unlike Facebook or any other social network which gives importance to personal stories and news.

There are several tools available to show RSS fire hose of news in magazine-like set up with plentiful images. Such tools examine your interests and find out which kind of topics or articles you like most by making use of certain algorithms. Flipboard, Pulse, Zite and Prismatic are the popular ones among these tools. Certain tools including Instapaper, Readability and Pocket provide the facility to save the news to read offline later, if you need a deep read instead of a quick scan. You can also use the â€˜Read Laterâ€™ button on Safari browser for the same purpose.

Instead of using tools, you can take the direct route for finding news, such as typing the URL of the relevant news source or organizations that you know. Now, news organizations are increasingly setting up their standalone apps for iOS, Android and Windows platforms with the facility to set up push notifications to inform you if something important happens. Google News is another effective method to find breaking stories (arranged by popularity), featured stories on various topics and other news easily from multiple sites rather than directly typing the URL. It also provides a better visual presentation with news map (given below).

The report recommends checking one or two reliable outlets a day for finding major stories. News.me in Twitter and Facebook feeds that summarize stories into daily e-mails and Harper’s Weekly Review (also available as newsletter) which runs down major stories that happened in the past seven days on every Tuesday are the best options according to the report. However, the report concludes that there is no specific solution to find the best news source as people always adopt a mix and match approach of collecting news from various outlets. To be specific, your requirement determines which Google Reader alternative is best for you.

About Rajeev Rajagopal

Rajeev Rajagopal is the Vice President of Managed Outsource Solutions, a leading BPO company in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Prior to joining MOS, he worked as a physical therapist. Having worked in several rehabilitation clinics, Rajeev has learned the importance of good medical records for medical billing and liability issues and the importance of the good back and front office support. He has extensive knowledge in SEO, medical billing and coding, and medical transcription. He has worked with a number of large organizations to effectively manage and provide outsourcing solutions.
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